“Yo. Damn, you had the baby? When?” he asked, then turned the camera for me to see as well. Jade had the camera on the baby in her arms.Dramatic ass.
“This morning.”
“And you’re just now calling us?” I asked, eyes on the road.
“Uh, yeah. Things happened fast, but he’s here. Another boy, even though I had high hopes of a girl.” I could hear her pouting through the phone.
G laughed. “This family can only produce boys. I’m convinced. Well besides, Ro.”
I laughed at the thought. “Where is Oden?”
“He ran to get me coffee. Please don’t start, they said I can have some.” She followed up with that statement quickly.
“Yo, damn, you had the baby. Shit.” Rennix’s sleep laced voice indicated that he had joined the FaceTime.
“Yes.”
“Ain’t even finna ask you the lil nigga’s name. OJ, right?”
Laughter ensued from all of us.
“You damn right. How did you know it was a boy?” she asked.
“Because this family can only have boys, everybody but Reminisce. Just watch, we’re gonna look up and he’ll have about five daughters down the line.”
“Yo, fuck you, Rennix. Don’t make me curse your stupid ass out for cursing me like that.” I screwed my face up at the thought. Rim and I hadn’t even talked about kids, but the thought of more daughters had me heated, ’cause I’d be all the way fucked up.
“Don’t get mad at me because it’s true. If not, test the theory.”
“Yo, shut the fuck up. This family already has too many babies. We good. You worry about your own theory instead of mine.”
G chuckled. “You know this fool is lowkey scared of kids. Remember when we were first in the car and he jumped whenshe looked at him? He only gets along with his daughter because she bullies him.”
“Yo, you right about that. I saw her get down on his ass about a cookie the other day,” Rennix’s funny ass agreed. “Where are y’all?”
“Leaving the store. This fool just bought the store out for Christmas, talking about he’s Rema Claus. He had about three meltdowns and wouldn’t let not one sales associate help us while he just threw shit in the carts. In about two hours we went from having two carts to three and all of them were categorized between Leapfrog, Disney shit, and stuff for the other kids. I think this fool done lost his mind.”
I cut my eyes at G’s real funny ass while my other siblings laughed on the phone.
“He did what?” Jade asked.
“Too fucking much, that’s what he did. Not to mention we got into a whole ass debate about Disney kitten heels.”
Epilogue
Karim
Christmas
If there’s a question of my heart, you got it.When I walked into my place a few weeks ago and it looked like Christmas had thrown up, I didn’t know what to think. I’d had a long day from shopping with my mother to finding myself in the pregnancy test aisle in Target since Kay and my mother were convinced I was pregnant. I hadn’t exhibited one symptom in front of them, yet I had Kay telling me I looked like I had gotten thicker, then my mother told me my nose looked shiny. I didn’t even know either of those things had anything to do with pregnancy and I was seriously waving them off, then it hit me. I hadn’t seen my period and I wasn’t on any type of contraceptive. That was extremely reckless, but before Reminisce, I wasn’t having sex. I wasn’t on some celibacy journey or anything like that, I just wasn’t. I was in denial about wanting Reminisce and living in that delusion. Then boom, two weeks before Christmas, I walked in the door holding baby girl and saw Christmas had not only thrown up in the living room, but I realized lunch was on its way back up.
“Yo, you gonna stand there looking crazy or come open this box?” Rem’s voice broke me from my thoughts.
I blinked a few times, glancing around the room that looked war-torn. The wrapping paper I had used on the influx of gifts Reminisce’s crazy ass bought Romance, along with what I’d also gotten, was all over the floor. A few feet away, she clicked and clopped away in a pair of Disney heels I couldn’t not buy for her.Reminisce hated them.
I moved toward him, deciding to sit in his lap on the floor rather than on the couch next to him. Once comfortable in his lap, he set the small black box in my hand.
“What is this?”
